My company produced electric power systems using converters that made alternating current from a direct current source: this by switching the output terminals to the source in a unique way. We had built a few different models all having the same deficiency; the load affected the quality of the output.

My job was to develop an elegant control scheme to prevent degradation of the output quality. I had completed the conceptual analysis of the control scheme and built a prototype for testin...(click to continue reading)

May 1935:

Another school year had ended but this one was different for me. I was no longer a junior high school student. I had graduated. It was all over except for the ceremony. I never figured out why, but the eighth grade class had to assemble for a final hurrah. We had to dress up and go to a graduation exercise. We all got a certificate saying that we had finished eighth grade. A report card had been enough before that.

A tradition existed that I had hardly noticed before....(click to continue reading)

On a bright day in late spring, the family’s four pre-school children played together in their back yard.  David and Stephen had taken on a project of making a flower bed next to the house, no doubt to try out their new toy garden tools.  They had turned over a little patch of dirt and were busy breaking up the clods they had turned.  It wasn’t very good garden soil, mostly clay from the excavation of the basement, so David was swinging his hoe mightily against the clods. 

Susanna’s cur...(click to continue reading)

Visualize this: The night has been cold and crisp. A super cooled mist has wafted in on a gentle breeze and sunrise is at hand. A thin cloud cover blocks the view of the rising sun but presents a bright gray sky. The world has a ghostly appearance. Frost covers everything in sight. This is no ordinary frost. This is hoarfrost, the kind that is built of billions of tiny icicles that cling to every naked branch and twig in the slumbering woods beside the road. The thin clouds dissipate as the sun ...(click to continue reading)

Development of the characteristics of my life for the first ten years was almost entirely family oriented. Of course there was some influence of school but not enough to reverse the influence of family.

As a young child, my parents, my little sister and I lived close to my maternal grandparents, and therefore I must include them, along with aunts and uncles in my family. Being the firstborn grandchild, I held a unique place in the family. No doubt I was spoiled from too much attention i...(click to continue reading)